A new analysis of the topography of the central Andes shows the uplifting of Earth's second highest continental plateau was driven in part by a huge zone of melted rock in the crust, known as a magma body. The Altiplano-Puna plateau is a high, dry region in the central Andes that includes parts of Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile, with vast plains punctuated by spectacular volcanoes. In a study published October 25 in Nature Communications, researchers used remote sensing data and topographic modeling techniques to reveal an enormous dome in the plateau. About 1 kilometer (3,300 feet) high and hundreds of...

PhysOrg ^ | October 24, 2006 | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Russell Mapes, a graduate student from Grass Valley, Calif., ...explains that these sediments of eastern origin were washed down from a highland area that formed in the Cretaceous Period, between 65 million and 145 million years ago, when the South American and African tectonic plates separated and passed each other. That highland tilted the river's flow westward, sending sediment as old as 2 billion years toward the center of the continent. A relatively low ridge, called the Purus Arch, which still exists, rose in the middle of the continent, running north and south, dividing the Amazon's flow - eastward toward...

American researcher David Johnson has advanced a theory that Nasca Lines may be related to water. He thinks that the geoglyphs may be a giant map of the underground water sources traced on the land. The Nasca Lines are located in the Peruvian desert, about 200 miles south of Lima. The assortment of perfectly-straight lines lies in an area measuring 37 miles long and 1-mile wide... While looking for sources of water, he noticed that ancient aqueducts, called puquios, seemed to be connected with some of the lines... Johnson gave each figure a meaning: the trapezoids always point to a...

COLUMBUS , Ohio – For the third time in as many years, glaciologist Lonnie Thompson has returned from an Andean ice field in Peru with samples from beds of ancient plants exposed for the first time in perhaps as much as 6,500 years. In 2002, he first stumbled across some non-fossilized plants exposed by the steadily retreating Quelccaya ice cap. Carbon dating showed that plant material was at least 5,000 years old. Then in 2004, Thompson found additional plant beds revealed by the continued retreat of the melting ice and when tested, these proved to be carbon-free, suggesting that they...

When the first prehistoric people trekked into South America toward the end of the Ice Age, they found a wondrous, lush continent inhabited by all manner of strange creatures like giant ground sloths and car-sized armadillos. But these hunter-gatherers proceeded to behave like an "invasive species," with their population surging then crashing as they relentlessly depleted natural resources. Only much later did people muster exponential population growth after forming fixed settlements with domesticated crops and animals... The researchers identified two distinct colonization phases: the first unfolding about 14,000 to 5,500 years ago, with the human population hitting around 300,000; the...

LIMA (AFP) – Archeologists have discovered a group of ancient tombs in the mountainous jungle of southeastern Peru they say is as important as the discovery of the lost city of Machu Picchu. The tombs belonging to the Wari culture were found on the jungle-covered eastern slope of the Andes in Cuzco department at a long-abandoned city thought to be the last redoubt of Inca resistance to Spanish colonial rule. The Waris, a pre-Inca civilization, had an enormous cultural impact in the Andean region between 600 and 1200. The Inca empire (around 1400 to 1532) was the largest pre-Columbian empire...

Squash grown 10,000 years ago in Peru By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer Thu Jun 28, 6:09 PM ET WASHINGTON - Agriculture was taking root in South America almost as early as the first farmers were breaking ground in the Middle East, new research indicates. Evidence that squash was being grown nearly 10,000 years ago, in what is now Peru, is reported in Friday's edition of the journal Science. A team led by anthropologist Tom D. Dillehay of Vanderbilt University also uncovered remains of peanuts from 7,600 years ago and cotton dated to 5,500 years ago in the floors...

Andean Crops Cultivated Almost 10,000 Years Ago by Michael Abrams Archaeologists have long thought that people in the Old World were planting, watering, weeding, and harvesting for a good 5,000 years before anyone in the New World did such things. But fresh evidence, in the form of Peruvian squash seeds, indicates that farming in the New and Old Worlds was nearly concurrent. In a paper the journal Science published last June, Tom Dillehay, an anthropological archaeologist at Vanderbilt University, revealed that the squash seeds he found in the ruins of what may have been ancient storage bins on the lower...

Trying to fathom farming's origins Tuesday, August 14, 2007 3:22 AM By Bradley T. Lepper Tom Dillehay, an archaeologist with Vanderbilt University, and several colleagues announced last month in the journal Science that they had recovered remarkably early evidence for agriculture in South America. Working at several sites in the Nanchoc Valley of northern Peru, they found squash seeds that were more than 9,000 years old. This is nearly twice as old as previously reported farming evidence in the region. Dillehay and his co-authors point out that one of the most important aspects of this discovery is that "horticulture and...

The discovery by Vanderbilt University anthropologist Tom Dillehay and his colleagues, Herbert Eling, Instituto Naciona de Anthropolotica e Historia in Coahulila, Mexico, and Jack Rossen, Ithaca College, was reported in the Nov. 22 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The anthropologists discovered the canals in Peru's upper middle Zana Valley, approximately 60 kilometers east of the Pacific coast. Preliminary results indicate one of the canals is over 6,700 years old, while another has been confirmed to be over 5,400 years old. They are the oldest such canals yet discovered in South America... Dillehay and his team...

Photograph courtesy of Tom D. DillehayRUNNING WATER The sites of ancient irrigation canals. People in Peru's Zaña Valley dug the canals as early as 6,700 years ago to divert river water to their crops. In the Andean foothills of Peru, not far from the Pacific coast, archaeologists have found what they say is evidence for the earliest known irrigated agriculture in the Americas. An analysis of four derelict canals, filled with silt and buried deep under sediments, showed that they were used to water cultivated fields 5,400 years ago, in one case possibly as early as 6,700 years ago,...

--snip-- we're taking a virtual journey down what was once more than 20,000 miles of road traversing some of the world's most challenging terrain — mountains, forests and deserts. The Inca road began at the center of the Inca universe: Cusco, a city in the Peruvian Andes, said to be built in the shape of a crouching puma. It actually was not a single road but a network of royal roads, an instrument of power designed for military transport, religious pilgrimages and to move supplies.

Japanese geologists have found that the earth beneath the ruins is shifting at an alarming rate. They say a major landslide could split the ruins in two at any time... Researchers from the Disaster Prevention Research Institute at Kyoto University set up 10 extensometers to measure the rate of surface movement. They found that one section of back slope was moving downwards at a rate of up to one centimetre per month... Sassa estimates that the landslide will be around 100 metres deep, enough to destroy all of Machu Picchu. The two-ridge structure of the site - with a concave...

Metals had never been found in Chachapoyas before the finding of these two vessels. They might not be as sacred as the Holy Grail, but two metal vessels recently discovered in Chachapoyas are turning heads in regards to understanding the region’s ancient history. “The Finding of these vessels will change the story about Chachapoyas” the Decentralized Department of Culture of the Amazonas head, Jose Santos Trauco Ramos, told El Comercio. The discovery of two silver vessels in the Soloco Purunllacta in Chachapoyas of the Amazonas department are unlike anything the archaeological team has found in its history. Investigations until this...

Caral, the Americas’ oldest civilization, located north of present day Lima, Peru, faced a grave crisis as a result of climate change some 4,000 years ago, archaeologists said. “Droughts were so severe that they could have lasted between 60 and 130 years, which could explain why there were social crises in (civilizations like) Caral, Moche and Tiahuanaco,” archaeologist Ruth Shady, director of the Caral Project, told Efe. Women played leading roles in Caral and a team led by Shady has been working for eight years in Vichama, an urban center near the Vegueta district, in the northern province of Huaura,...

Researchers in Peru have discovered a trio of statuettes they believe were created by the ancient Caral civilization some 3,800 years ago, the culture ministry said Tuesday. The mud statuettes were found inside a reed basket in a building at the ancient city of Vichama in northern Peru, which is today an important archaeological site. The ministry said they were probably used in religious rituals performed before breaking ground on a new building. Two of the figures, a naked man and woman painted in white, black and red, are believed to represent political authorities. The third, a women with 28...

Fifty four years after a Douglas DC-3 crashed in Chile’s Andes – killing all 24 people aboard, including members of a Chilean soccer team and three referees – a team of mountaineers discovered the remains of the crash. The 1961 LAN 301 air crash was deemed at the time one of the world’s major air disasters involving athletes – surpassed maybe only by the 1972 Uruguayan plane crash that stranded members of a rugby in the high Andes. The plane’s whereabouts has been one of the great unsolved aerial mysteries.

Mountaineers in Chile have discovered the wreckage of a plane that went missing more than 50 years ago. Twenty four people died when the aircraft disappeared in 1961 - among them eight players for what was then one of Chile's top football teams. VIDEO at site.

Mummy Hair Reveals Drinking Habits By Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News Sept. 23, 2004 Mummy hair has revealed the first direct evidence of alcohol consumption in ancient populations, according to new forensic research.The study, still in its preliminary stage, examined hair samples from spontaneously mummified remains discovered in one of the most arid regions of the world, the Atacama Desert of northern Chile and southern Peru. The research was presented at the 5th World Congress on Mummy Studies in Turin, Italy, this month. “ In modern human hair the levels would generally be in the ranges of social drinking, but we...

Mummified dogs uncovered in Peru By Dan Collins BBC News, Lima Archaeologists in Peru have uncovered the mummified remains of more than 40 dogs buried with blankets and food alongside their human masters. The discovery was made during the excavation of two of the ancient Chiribaya people who lived in southern Peru between 900 and 1350 AD. Experts say the dogs' treatment in death indicated the belief that the animals had an afterlife. Such a status for pets has only previously been seen in ancient Egypt. Hundreds of years before the European conquest of South America, the Chiribaya civilisation valued...

LIMA, Peru -- Even in ancient Peru, it seems dogs were a man's best friend. Peruvian investigators have discovered a pre-Columbian culture of dog lovers who built pet cemeteries and buried their pets with warm blankets and even treats for the afterlife. "They are dogs that were thanked and recognized for their social and familial contribution," anthropologist Sonia Guillen said. "These dogs were not sacrificed." Since 1993, researchers have unearthed 82 dog tombs in pet cemetery plots, laid alongside human mummy tombs of the Chiribaya people in the fertile Osmore River valley, 540 miles southeast of Lima. The Chiribaya were...

Two of the oldest mummies found in Peru - so well preserved that one had an eye and internal organs intact - have gone on display after their discovery by building workers two weeks ago. Officials from the National Institute of Culture said the mummies - a young boy and a man in his mid-30s - were at least 700 years old. They came from a culture that predated the Incas, who dominated a vast swathe of South America from Colombia to Chile until they were toppled by Spanish invaders in the 1530s. Well preserved ... one of the recently...

The Anomalous Aerial Phenomenon Research Department (DIFAA) is scheduled to be formally launched in Lima today at the offices of the Peruvian Air Force with the assistance of the Civilian Advisory Council. The announcement was made by council member Giorgio Piacenza who is also an adviser to the Exopolitics Institute. During his talk he outlined the plans for the new department and emphasised that it would value objective research and employ a number of qualified researchers and scientists.

Pre-Incan Metallurgy Discovered Charles Q. Choi Special to LiveScience Thu Apr 19, 9:50 AM ET Metals found in lake mud in the central Peruvian Andes have revealed the first evidence for pre-Colonial metalsmithing there. These findings illustrate a way that archaeologists can recreate the past even when looters have destroyed the valuable artifacts that would ordinarily be relied upon to reveal historical secrets. For instance, the new research hints at a tax imposed on local villages by ancient Inca rulers to force a switch from production of copper to silver. Pre-Colonial bronze artifacts have previously been found in the central...

As they waited to be sacrificed outside a temple, the victims made no attempt to escape their fate: their throats were cut, they were decapitated and their hearts ripped out. Their hands were not tied and they offered no resistance to the sacrificial knife. A seed containing a potent drug was used to paralyse their bodies, leaving the victims aware of a terrifying ritual that has been revealed for the first time by a dig in the vast pre-Colombian city of Túcume in northern Peru. Archaeologists working in the ruined city of giant pyramids have discovered one of the largest...

Reuters) - Archaeologists in Peru on Thursday said they have unearthed a massive royal tomb full of mummified women that provides clues about the enigmatic Wari empire that ruled the Andes long before their better-known Incan successors. "For the first time in the history of archeology in Peru we have found an imperial tomb that belongs to the Wari empire and culture," lead archeologist Milosz Giersz said. Researchers said the discovery will help them piece together life in the Andes centuries before the rise of the Incan empire, which was written about in detail by the conquering Spaniards. The mausoleum,...

Pre-Inca Ruins Emerging From Peru's Cloud Forests John Roach for National Geographic News September 16, 2004 On the eastern slope of the Andes mountains in northern Peru, forests cloak the ruins of a pre-Inca civilization, the size and scope of which explorers and archaeologists are only now beginning to understand. Known as the Chachapoya, the civilization covered an estimated 25,000 square miles (65,000 square kilometers). The Chachapoya, distinguished by fair skin and great height, lived primarily on ridges and mountaintops in circular stone houses. Sean Savoy, leader of the Gran Saposoa-El Dorado IV Expedition (July-August 2004), points out a stone...

Peru Temple, Mural Hints at Complexity By LESLIE JOSEPHS LIMA, Peru (AP) — The sophisticated design and colorful artwork found in a 4,000-year-old temple unearthed near Peru's northern desert coast suggests that early civilization here was more complex than originally thought, archaeologists said. Ventarron, a 7,000-square-foot site — a bit larger than a basketball court — with painted walls and a white-and-red mural of a deer hunt, points to an "advanced civilization," said the lead archaeologist who excavated the site last week. "We have the use of a construction material that is not primitive," Walter Alva, a prominent Peruvian archaeologist...

Ancient "Human Sacrifices" Found in Peru, Expert SaysKelly Hearn for National Geographic NewsJune 4, 2008 Three possible human sacrifice victims have been found at a 4,000-year-old archaeological site in Peru, an archaeologist says. The apparently mutilated, partial skeletons (see photos) could overturn the peaceful reputation of the Pre-Ceramic period (3000 B.C. to 1800 B.C.) in the Andes mountains—a time generally seen as free of ritualized killing and warfare. Alejandro Chu Barrera, who led the dig, said: "We found two pairs of legs—probably young females around their 20s—and the decapitated body of a young male in his 20s." "They appear to...

EAGER to attract more tourists, the town of Tiwanaku in the Bolivian Andes has spruced up the ancient Akapana pyramid with adobe instead of stone, in what some experts are calling a renovation fiasco. Now, the Akapana pyramid risks losing its designation as a UN World Heritage Site and there is concern the makeover could even cause its collapse. The pyramid is one of the biggest pre-Columbian constructions in South America and a building of great spiritual significance for the Tiwanaku civilisation, which spread throughout south-western Bolivia and parts of neighboring Peru, Argentina and Chile from around 1500 BC to...

Chilean authorities on Sunday issued a red alert -- the most severe in their warning system -- that the Copahue Volcano, high in the Andes mountains on the border with Argentina, might be poised for a significant eruption. In a statement, Chile's Geological and Mining Service stressed that no mandatory evacuations have been ordered around the remote volcano, which lies about 280 kilometers southeast (175 miles) of Concepcion, though the closest roads to it are in Argentina. Even though the seismic activity suggests a minor eruption, the agency decided to raise the alert level because it could not rule out...

Forty year on from the plane crash that changed his life forever, Dr Roberto Canessa still vividly remembers having to eat the flesh of friends to survive. He was one of 16 men who escaped death when their chartered aircraft smashed into the bleak Andes mountains between Chile and Argentina on October 13, 1972. They were rescued 72 days later after Dr Canessa, then a 19-year-old medical student, and another survivor trekked for 10 days to get help.

Billions would have died in the nuclear holocaust. But this was the plan from the Latin American warmonger Che Guevara, who's face is emblazoned on T-shirts around the globe: “What?!” Khrushchev gasped upon reading Castro’s telegram on Oct. 28 1962. “Is he proposing that we start a nuclear war? That we launch missiles from Cuba? But that is insane! Remove them (our missiles) as soon as possible! Before its too late!” instructed the Soviet premier. So much for the Camelot fable of JFK “standing up to the Russians,” during the Missile Crisis Khrushchev “blinked” alright. But at Fidel Castro and...

Throughout human history unsustainable agricultural practices have turned fragile ecosystems into wastelands and left people starving. During the Dust Bowl, American farmers learned the consequences of removing the deep rooted grasses from the Great Plains when the soil blew away in tremendous dust storms. Icelandic shepherds learned that the sheep rearing practices their ancestors used on the European mainland destroyed the thin soils of their island and left them with starving herds and little to eat. The ancient inhabitants of what is now Peru also learned the unhappy consequences of farming in a delicate ecosystem. The Ica Valley, near the...

University of Pennsylvania Museum archaeologists working at the renowned ancient site of Tiwanaku in Bolivia site sometimes called the "American Stonehenge" have joined forces with a team of engineers, mathematicians, computer scientists and anthropologists from the University of Pennsylvania's Department of Computer and Information Science, School of Engineering, the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies, University of Arkansas, and the Department of Anthropology, University of Denver, to begin a large-scale, subsurface surveying project using equipment and techniques that may one day serve as a model for future archaeological efforts worldwide. Their three-year, collaborative pilot project, made possible through a 1.05 million...

Analysis of a 440-year-old document reveals new details about native population decline in the heartland of the Inca Empire following Spanish conquest in the 16th century. According to the analysis, the native Andean population in the Yucay Valley of Peru showed a remarkable ability to bounce back in the short term from the disease, warfare, and famine that accompanied the initial Spanish invasion. However, it was the repetition of such disasters generation after generation, along with overly rigid colonial administration, that dramatically reduced the population over the long term... The analysis is based on an unusually detailed survey of the...

A week ago, the world watched Chilean miners resurface one by one from their hellacious entrapment. But few people understood the true measure of triumph over death as Nando Parrado did. You've probably heard of him, even if you don't recognize his name. On Friday, Oct. 13, 1972 – 38 years ago to the day from when the first Chilean miner was rescued – a charter plane carrying Parrado, his mother, his younger sister and his rugby teammates from Uruguay slammed into the middle of the Andes Mountains east of Chile.

...the most ancient in the country and identifies them with the Bracamoros culture, the daily El Comercio said on Saturday. On both sites were found 14 burial vaults that typically contain the skeletons of newborns and adolescents placed there as offerings at different times in the course of the 800 years these buildings were in use, the newspaper said. The Bracamoros culture occupied part of the current Ecuadorian province of Zamora Chinchipe and the Peruvian regions of Amazonas and Cajamarca, where the temples were found, the daily said. It said that the place where the archaeological remains were uncovered was...

These are near the volcano Nevado del Huila, southwest of Bogota. I wouldn't normally think of Colombia as a semi-desert environment, but these high alpine mountain basins can be pretty dry. [Click for full-size.]

Microbes thriving in salty, alkali waters containing arsenic.It looks peaceful, but Laguna del Diamante's waters are deadly.MARÍA EUGENIA FARÍAS Argentinian investigators have found flamingos and mysterious microbes living in an alkaline lagoon nestled inside a volcano in the Andes. The organisms, exposed to arsenic and poisonous gases, could shed light on how life began on Earth, and their hardiness to extreme conditions may hold the key to new scientific applications.In 2009, a team led by María Eugenia Farías, a microbiologist at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council in Tucumán, Argentina, discovered living stromatolites in the Socompa and Tolar Grande...

Here we have some poor mountain people in Peru, living in the most primitive of conditions, on the verge of ‘extinction' because of severe cold, and it is being said that this proves, dare I say it, even as I shake my head at the utter silliness, this proves the "world growing ever hotter." Global warming/Climate change believers continue to seek validation for bad science. It's the continual mantra, "See, see! It's true!" Climategate broke last year and the Copenhagen Climate Carnival collapsed. The jig is up, but all the same, it's about finding that one item, which can be...

The pure white snow atop the Andes Mountains may not be so pure after all. Scientists have found traces of toxic pollutants called PCBs in snow samples taken from Aconcagua Mountain, the highest peak in the Americas. While the overall PCB levels were quite low, the results show that these long-lasting contaminants, notorious for causing myriad health problems, can end up at altitudes as high as 20,340 feet (6,200 meters), making their way through the atmosphere to these remote areas. PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, break down slowly, and as a result, can last for many years in the environment. They...

Recent studies show that one in three Canadians suffer from stress and the number is on the rise. But stress isn't a new problem. While the physiological state wasn't properly named until the 1930s, new research from The University of Western Ontario proves stress has plagued humans for hundreds, and perhaps thousands of years. The first study of its kind, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, detected the stress hormone cortisol in the hair of ancient Peruvians, who lived between 550 and 1532 A.D. When an individual is stressed – due to real or perceived threats – cortisol is...

Above the Inca capital of Cusco (Q'osco) sits the important ceremonial site and one of human-kinds most impressive constructions called Sacsayhuamán, which despite its global fame still offers up secrets to investigators. Yesterday the discovery was announced of three burials, one of which contained the severed heads of the Inca's enemies. The discovery was made within the archaeological park of Sacsayhuamán in the area of Qowikarana, under threat from illegal settlements of the city's poor. Chief on-site archaeologist Washington Camacho explains that three separate burials were found -- one of an older man buried with a ceremonial knife, one of...

The geologic faults responsible for the rise of the eastern Andes mountains in Colombia became active 25 million years ago -- 18 million years before the previously accepted start date for the Andes' rise, according to researchers at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, the University of Potsdam in Germany and Ecopetrol in Colombia... The team integrated new geologic maps that illustrate tectonic thrusting and faulting, information about the origins and movements of sediments and the location and age of plant pollen in the sediments, as well as zircon-fission track analysis to provide an unusually thorough description of basin...

The Amazon basin is well known for its wide variety of species, but the rainforest might owe some credit to the mountains as a source for that rich diversity. A new study found that populations of poison frogs made their way from the Andes to the Amazon about a dozen times over the last 10 million years. Scientists suspect that the mountains have long been supplying the jungle with other species of plants and animals, too.

Ancient Iron Ore Mine Discovered in Peruvian Andes Kelly Hearn in Buenos Aires, Argentina for National Geographic NewsFebruary 11, 2008 A 2,000-year-old mine has been discovered high in mountains in Peru. The find offers proof that an ancient people in the Andes mined hematite iron ore centuries before the Inca Empire, archaeologists say. The mine was used to tap a vein of hematite, or ochre—the first such mine found in South America that predates the arrival of Spanish conquistadors, experts note. The discovery, reported by a U.S. archaeologist, was made in southern Peru in the region once inhabited by the...

Searched on Andes volcanoes, and I was thinking of this: Osorno (Chile) But I found this and couldn't pass it up. Reventador (Ecuador) Can't have the first without the second. This was the November 2, 2002 eruption of Reventador.

QUITO, ECUADOR — The Ecuadorean government on Friday insisted on ending a cooperation agreement with the United States that allows the U.S. military to use a coastal air force base for anti-drug operations in the Andes. -snip- ...Galo Mora, a representative of Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, told participants at a solidarity forum with Cuba. The 10-year agreement, signed by the United States and Ecuador in 1999, allows Washington to deploy up to 475 military personnel in Manta in support of counternarcotics operations.